Back in September last year Hurricane Ike, which had begun life as a tropical disturbance off the coast of Africa completed its journey of terror and destruction, making landfall east of Galveston Texas. A Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 230 kilometres an hour, it was the third most destructive hurricane to hit the US, causing an estimated USD$24 billion in damages. Ike was blamed for 195 deaths in total, 112 in the US alone.
Imagine if you will that you lived in the cyclone's path. The storm has passed, your roof's blown off, and a tree from the neighbour's yard is sitting in your lounge room. Your suburb is without power, your freezer and fridge contents are spoiling, the local rain is pouring in, it's getting dark and cold and you would pop down to the local Wal-Mart to pick up supplies but there's just a big empty car park where the store used to be.
Now if you are lucky enough to have a power generator, you're probably going to fire that sucker up and put it to some good use. Good use in the 'survival' sense of the word. Good use in the 'most basic needs' sense of the word. Cover off on those physiological needs. Food and shelter come readily to mind. If you're like me, you would probably be thanking your lucky stars that you had the foresight to buy a portable generator, and even more importantly that you'd remembered to fill up the jerry cans of fuel the day before. After patting yourself on the back, you'd be off to power up the generator, run an extension lead into the house, hook up your fridge and freezer, boil some drinking water, and perhaps power a few lights. That could just be me of course. Turns out many people in Houston had different priorities.
The Houston Chronicle reports that a large number of children were treated for carbon monoxide poisoning at the Hermann Hospital-Texas Medical Centre back in September last year in the days after the cyclone hit. In 75 percent of the cases where it was possible to ascertain what the children were doing, it was discovered that the kids were playing video games.
It's enough to have Albert Maslow turning in his grave. University of Texas associate professor of medicine, Dr Caroline Fife echoed a similar sentiment.
"It was hard to deny there was a pattern which we hadn’t expected to see so soon after the storm. Our bias has been that people use generators because they need to keep cool or run equipment to maintain necessary household functions, like food storage."
The kids are awfully quiet. Perhaps I should check in on them?
Now, it's clear (if you've read any of my past columns, that despite being a self proclaimed passionate gamer, I am clearly not, and will never be a hard-core gamer. Perhaps you figure this Maslow dude had his hierarchy of needs all arse about. Sure, his 1940's test subjects were all keen on the basics like breathing and eating and a roof over their heads but that was the 1940's. That was before the advent of the videogame! Perhaps videogames are the very air you breathe - or in this case - the carbon monoxide. While the US postal service is delivering the mail come rain hail or snow, perhaps you're gaming whatever the weather, no matter how big the calamity, no matter how tragic the tragedy.
The findings of the carbon monoxide breathing, videogame playing Texans are to be published in the June issue of the US Journal of Paediatrics. Dr Fife hope the finding will encourage emergency management agencies and mobile phone providers to reach out to children rather than adults, warning kids about the dangers of carbon monoxide.
“If we’re not able to reach the parents, well, maybe the answer is that we need to reach these children,” said Fife, who is also Memorial Hermann’s director of clinical research.
Call me a cynic, but I don't really know if that's a great idea. If your Mum and Dad between them, couldn't figure out that putting the generator inside the same room as the kids wasn't such a smart idea, and not only that, but figured powering Zac's PS3 was the best way to put the limited back-up power to use, then I'm not entirely sure that their offspring, Zac, is going to be any brighter. I'm all for education, but surely this is natural selection at work.
And before you condemn me as a callous and thoughtless human being, I can happily tell you that all the patients treated for carbon monoxide poisoning went on to make a full recovery.
Just a final warning, if you're experiencing headache, nausea dizziness or weakness, and you don't normally feel like that after reading The Wrap, can I suggest you throw open the window, turn off the fuel-powered generator and go for a walk outside.
Great Oracle or PALGN Pretender
A couple of weeks back I gazed into the bottom of my teacup and attempted to read my tea leaves, only to discover I'd used a tea bag. Not to be outdone I ripped open the bag, examined the leaves and boldly
predicted what shape and form I hoped Sony's new PSP might take. Here's what I thought at the time; Bluetooth, 802.11g, dedicated flash memory, together with continued support for the memory stick pro duo format. A size more in keeping with the iPhone, just a tad thicker to accommodate the sliding form factor and two analogue nubs, three SKU's and pricing consistent with Apple's iTouch models.
How did I do? Well I was wrong about the date of the reveal, with Sony themselves leaking details last weekend before E3. I was right with my thoughts on the form factor and my thoughts on Bluetooth. Dual analogue nubs turned out to be wishful thinking on my part, and upgraded Wi-Fi capability was sadly just a pipe dream. Clearly Sony have discovered another few pallets of 802.11b wireless chips in the same Sony warehouse facility that stores the unwanted cassette tape Walkmans and Beta VCRs.
My hopes for Sony Sanctioned UMD ripping may still be on the cards in one form or the other according to this report. Speaking to Gizmodo on Thursday, Sony's John Koller, Director of Hardware Marketing for Sony said, "We're in the midst of putting together a good will program. We'll be unveiling that soon [because] we actually think there's a significant group that will be upgrading from the 1000...In the past, we've seen a 20-25% trade-up factor, and I assume that's going to be the case here. We've modelled that. So we're looking at a good-will program—a short term good-will program that would continue for years afterward."
I was wrong when it came to the name too. PSP Go! Just forget what I said...the name's growing on me.
Until next week, that's The Wrap
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